Chateau Angelus Collectors Wine Tasting at WWWB with Special Guest Hubert de Bouard

"It wasn't always like this. Before Paris, people didn't drink our wine. I mean, my friends did. But you could hardly consider their palates discerning..."

Bo Barrett - Bottle Shock

We are big fans of Chateau Angelus so when I heard that Hubert de Bouard was coming into town I knew that we had a lot of Chateau Angelus collectors out there that would love to bring a bottle out of their cellar to share with our group tonight.

Our collector series tasting event is where we ask you, our wine drinking people, to come up with some wine from your wine collection to add to the party in exchange for your ticket to the event. That’s correct the collector series tasting portion of the event is FREE, all it will cost you is one bottle of Chateau Angelus from your cellar!!

Chateau Angelus Collectors Cellar Tasting with Hubert de Bouard at WWWBThursday January 18th7:30pm

Let me explain further- this is a two part event:

The first part of the evening begins at 7:30pm, this is where we will be tasting through a vertical selection of 10 vintages of Chateau Angelus. The price of admission is one bottle of Chateau Angelus St. Emilion from your cellar, but here is the catch- we only need 2 bottles of each wine, so the longer you wait to respond the harder it will be to get a seat as you will have to go further back in time because the youngest vintages will be filled up by the first collectors who respond.

If you would like to attend the vertical tasting just respond to andy@winewatch.com with the vintage of Chateau Angelus you would like to trade for your seat.

**There are only 20 spaces available for this event.

Here are the vintages that we have already:

(I will add the vintages as people respond with the vintage they are bringing. We have 4 vintages before sending out this announcement!)

2006 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

(95 Points) A spectacular effort (what’s new?), this brilliant offering from proprietor Hubert de Bouard is another classic. A blend of 62% Merlot and 38% Cabernet Franc, it boasts an inky/purple color as well as a sumptuous bouquet of creosote, blueberry pie, espresso roast, blackberries, and graphite. Extremely full-bodied and stunningly rich with a multi-layered texture, sweet tannin, and a 45-second finish, this exceptional 2006 is one of the great wines of St.-Emilion. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2028. Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

2005 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

(100 Points) Truly great stuff, this wine performed at a three-digit level both in the horizontal tasting of 2005s in Baltimore, as well as in Montreal at this mini-vertical. This sensational, opaque, bluish/purple wine offers up notes of vanillin, spring flowers, blueberry and blackberry liqueur, plus a touch of licorice. The wine hits the palate with a thunderous cascade of ripe, rich, concentrated fruit. It is full-bodied, multidimensional and layered. The tannins are beautifully integrated but still present, and the wood, acidity, alcohol, etc., are all beautifully assimilated in this magnificent, majestic vintage of Angelus. It can be drunk now, but it is still an adolescent and that suggests it has at least another 25-35 years of longevity. - Robert M. Parker, Jr. Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, August 2015

2004 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

(95 Points) This 7,500-case blend of 62% Merlot and 38% Cabernet Franc is one of the strongest wines of the vintage. A deep blue/purple hue is accompanied by classic aromas of smoky blueberries and blackberries as well as incense and floral notes in the background. A beautiful texture, opulence, flamboyance, and purity characterize this stunningly deep, full-bodied effort, another great success from proprietor Hubert de Bouard. Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

2003 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

(99 Points) One of the great successes in St. Emilion in 2003, this wine has actually gotten better over the last eleven years. Pushing perfection, this blend of 57% Cabernet Franc (the highest ever at Angelus) and 43% Merlot boasts a dense purple color as well as a sublime set of aromatics, including forest floor, blue, red and black fruits, charcoal and hints of licorice and wood spice. Long, opulent, voluptuously textured and incredibly youthful and fresh, this full-bodied, tour de force in winemaking is an absolute legend in the making. It is an incredible accomplishment for a Right Bank 2003. Kudos to Hubert de Bouard for his vision as well as his perfectionist personality. This beauty should age for 5-10 more years. Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

2001 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

2000 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

1997 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

1996 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

1995 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

1994 Chateau Angelus St. Emilion

Here are the vintages that we have in the store right now if you don't have any Chateau Angelus in your cellar.

Vintages of Chateau Angelus available at Wine Watch

Carillon de Angelus St Emilion 2009
Price: $150 Sale $132.00

The second wines of great chateau like Angelus are some of the best values in Bordeaux.

(93 Points) A brilliant performance by Hubert de Bouard, the 2001 Angelus (6,250 cases) is a more restrained and delineated version of the 2000. It has shed much of its tannin, and seems far more evolved and open-knit than I thought prior to bottling. Its deep purple color is followed by a rich nose of creosote, charcoal, blackberries, plums, cassis, and espresso roast. Elegant, medium-bodied, and rich, with a measured ripeness and moderate structure in the pure, nicely proportioned finish, it is less massive than either the 2000 or 2003, yet is also beautifully put together. Anticipated maturity: 2007-2017. Wine Advocate #153

Part Two: Dinner with Hubert de Bouard

The dinner starts at 8:30pm (this part is optional but we will have extra wine left over from the tasting and we are already seated at a restaurant...) Toni Lampasone will be making a special menu for those that would like to stay for dinner and finish the tasting wines. The fee for the dinner is $75 + tax.

A bit of history about Chateau Angelus from one of the most compressive web pages on Bordeaux. www.thewinecellarinsider.com

Chateau Angelus has one of the longer histories in the St. Emilion appellation. The de Bouard family has a long history in the region. In fact, the de Bouard family has been in Bordeaux for more than 700 years. They arrived in St. Emilion in 1782. However, even though Chateau Angelus has been around for quite a while, the chateau does not have the same track record. Compared to the current owners, Angelus is mere baby having been born in 1782. That was the year when Georges de Bouard began purchasing vineyard land in the St. Emilion area. At the time, de Bouard was a Jurat, and a member of the Jurade of St. Emilion

Skipping ahead a few hundred years, Catherine de Bouard de Laforest began living at a St. Emilion property known as Chateau Mazerat at the close of the 18th century. The addition of 13 hectares of prime vineyard land acquired by Maurice de Bouard de La Forest further increased their holdings. Maurice de Bouard de La Forest continued adding more vineyard land and was soon referring to the property as Clos de L’Angelus. Over the years, more vines were added to the vineyard.

Angelus earned its name from a common, everyday event. On a daily basis, the people working their Bordeaux vineyards heard the sound of the bells from three local churches. That sound inspired the now famous name of the chateau as well as the logo and the sculpture of the logo that appears in the backyard of the property.

Chateau Angelus is still owned by the de Bouard family. In fact, since 1989, Angelus is considered one of the top estates in the entire Right Bank appellation. Hubert de Bouard is currently in charge of managing the family directed property. Today, all the children participate in running the estate. Prior to his tenure, the truth is, the property was not making wines as good as their terroir allowed. The estate had a reputation for having made great wines in the 1950’s. But by the 1960’s, the quality of wine being produced at the St. Emilion had slipped.

Hubert de Bouard joined the family business at Chateau Angelus after graduating from Bordeaux University, where he studied under the famed Professor Emily Peynaud. It took a while before things began turning around for Chateau Angelus. In years like 1982 and 1985, when the materials were there to make great wine, like many St. Emilion estates, Chateau Angelus under-performed.

Starting with the 1988 vintage, Hubert began rapidly turning things around at Angelus. He was one of the first Bordeaux wine makers to embrace fermenting in open top vats and conducting malolactic fermentation in small barrels. Hubert de Bouard began employing other techniques that were popular in Burgundy, but were not widely used at the time in Bordeaux. This included fermenting with whole berries, ageing on the lees, farming, harvesting and vinifying on a parel by parcel basis.

To further improve the wines of Chateau Angelus, Hubert de Bouard lowered yields, increased selection and began aging the wines in new, French oak barrels. de Bouard, a former pupil of Emile Peynaud insists he was, and is making Bordeaux wine at Angelus the way it was made during the 1950’s, but with a modern twist.

Shortly after de Bouard began running the property, he instituted another change. He changed the name from L’Angelus to Angelus. He said, “This allows the wine to show up first in alphabetized lists.” He was right!

The vineyards of Chateau Angelus cover 39 hectares. 27 of those hectares are classified with First Growth status. The vines are planted on two unique types of soil. They have terroir of clay with limestone and clay with sand and limestone that is located on the sloping hillsides. The vineyard is planted to 50% Merlot , 47% Cabernet Franc and 3% Cabernet Sauvignon . This shows a continuing increase in the amount of Cabernet Franc in the vineyard and of course in the final blend as well. The vines average close to 38 years of age. The estate has old vines dating all the way back to 1918. While the oldest vines are Merlot, the estate has 10 hectares of Cabernet Franc that are more than 60 years of age. The vineyard is planted to a vine density that ranges from 6,500 to 8,000 plants per hectare. Newer plantings are the higher level of vine density.

Serious vineyard management techniques are practiced including debudding, followed by crop thinning in the summer and green harvesting. The vines are pruned using “Girondine” method, which leaves two canes. Vineyard practices remain traditional. Some rows are seeded with grass to reduce water.

The vine canopies allow the leafs to gain maximum sun exposure. The fruit is hand picked and sorted three times. In the vineyard, again after it’s been destemmed and a final time at the winery. Starting with the 2009 vintage, Hubert de Bouard’s pursuit to obtain the finest possible Bordeaux wine inspired him to add a line of 60 people to manually destem berry by berry. Hubert believes manual destemming helps the berries remain intact. It’s amazing watching two rows of destemmers, each 30 deep in people, working on the fruit, one berry at a time. Hubert de Bouard said, “Manual destemming helps the berries remain intact, while retarding oxygenation and retaining freshness”. de Bouard used this method for 20% of the 2009 crop. In 2010, they employed 150 workers to manually destem the grapes . With the additional workers, they came close to hand destemming half their crop!

From that point forward, destemming takes place using the cube. For storing, they were one of the first St. Emilion estates to embrace optical sorting technology. To ensure only the top grapes are used, an additional hand sorting takes place after the fruit is put through the optical sorter.

To make the wine of Chateau Angelus, the process starts with cold maceration that is seldom more than 5 days. Fermentation takes place in a combination of 24 temperature controlled vats of wood, stainless steel and concrete. There are 8 wood vats ranging in size from 70 to 75 hectoliters. There are 8 stainless steel vats, concrete and open top, oak vats. The vats are on average 70 hectoliters, with some smaller vats of 50 hectoliters. There are 9 concrete tanks as well. Everything in the cellar moves by gravity flow. After Malolactic fermentation in barrel is completed, the wine is aged in 100% new, French oak barrels for between 18-24 months. The length of time depends on the vintage and its characteristics. On average, there are 8,500 cases of Chateau Angelus produced every vintage. The estate also produces a second Bordeaux wine, Le Carillon de l’Angelus.

Starting in 2007, Chateau Angelus introduced a third wine, Number 3 d’Angelus. Productions of the third wine is small with close to 800 cases per vintage. The de Bouard family own other estates in the Right Bank including; Chateau Bellevue in St. Emilion, La Fleur de Bouard in Lalande de Pomerol and Chateau de-Francs in Cotes de Francs . Hubert de Bouard consults numerous chateaux in the Medoc , Pessac Leognan , St. Emilion and Pomerol .

In June, 2012, Stephanie de Bouard-Rivoal, the daughter of Hubert de Bouard was named executive manager of the estate. That same year. September 6, 2012, Chateau Angelus was upgraded in the official 2012 St. Emilion Classification to Premier Grand Cru Classe A. Only 4 St. Emilion estates share that honor. To celebrate the upgrade in the classification, Chateau Angelus released the 2012 vintage in a special pitch black, colored bottle that was embossed with a 21.7 carat gold imprinted script. This design replaced their standard paper label. The unique design will only be used for the Chateau Angelus 2012 vintage. When the 2012 Angelus was first offered for sale as a future , the estate raised the price. A decision that was considered controversial, due to the moderate quality of the difficult vintage. However, prices for all back vintage of Chateau Angelus quickly moved up in the marketplace following their elevated status, vindicating their price increase.

Preceding and coinciding with the upgrade of the classification for Chateau Angelus, the estate finished a complete renovation of the property. Designed by the noted architect Jean-Pierre Errath, the massive project included the creation of new cellars, a reception center for guests, work on the chateau, business offices and the famous, Chateau Angelus Bell tower. A large part of the effort required extensive use of limestone blocks from the Frontenac quarries located in St. Emilion. It is estimated that the total cost of the renovations was close to 10 million Euros. Much of the work was completed in 2013, just in time for the 2013 harvest. The entire renovation of Chateau Angelus was finished in early 2014. The estates renovation is not the only new project Hubert de Bouard has been in involved with. In late 2013, the de Bouard family expanded their holdings in St Emilion when they purchased the restaurant, Logis de la Cadene. Logis de la Cadene has one of the longest histories in St. Emilion and having dined there, from personal experience I can honestly say, its one of the top restaurants in all of Bordeaux as well.